King of the Cloud: How the Seattle region is positioned to reinvent technology, again

King of the Cloud: How the Seattle region is positioned to reinvent technology, again

Photo by Kevin Lisota In 2003, a group of Amazon.com engineers had a radical idea: offer outsiders access to the same type of infrastructure that powered the online retailer’s growing e-commerce site. Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos liked the concept, and Amazon Web Services launched in 2006, clearing the way for a new era of computing. Few knew it at the time, but Amazon’s unexpected and unconventional idea would upend the tech industry, disrupting startups and tech giants alike. Ten years later, AWS is on track to generate $10 billion in annual revenue and more than half of Amazon’s profits. If it were a standalone company, AWS would easily qualify for the Fortune 500 — with more revenue than many of its own high-profile customers, including Expedia, Yelp, and Netflix. The rise of Amazon Web Services — along with the growth of Microsoft…